Van Gogh
I’ve had it with Anselm Kiefer
August is always a crap month for exhibitions in London. The collectors are elsewhere, the dealers are presumably hot on…
Poise and gentleness: Hiroshige, at the British Museum, reviewed
Why is Hiroshige’s work so delightful? While his close predecessor Hokusai has more drama in his draughtsmanship, Hiroshige’s pastoral visions…
It’s moving to think how happy Van Gogh was in Brixton
When a phrase really takes off in the political sphere, you will recognise it by the frequency with which it…
Inside the mind of Vincent Van Gogh
Van Gogh only got one major review in his career, and he was mystified by it. When the critic Albert…
The importance of copying
The lunatics were once in charge of the asylum. The first six directors of the National Gallery were all artists:…
Face time
In September 1889, Vincent van Gogh sent his brother Theo a new self-portrait from the mental hospital at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. ‘You…
…and of looking at real pictures again
One Sunday evening in the autumn of 1888 Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin went for a walk. They headed…
Small wonder
John Constable’s paintings of a tiny corner of rural Suffolk teach us to see the beauty on our doorstep, says Martin Gayford
Flower power
Critics have argued over the meaning of the great golden flower head to which Van Dyck points in his ‘Self-Portrait…
Pilferer, paedophile and true great: Gauguin Portraits at the National Gallery reviewed
On 25 November 1895, Camille Pissarro wrote to his son Lucien. He described how he had bumped into his erstwhile…
‘Lock him in a motel & he’d do something astonishing’: Hockney on the genius of Van Gogh
Being in the south of France obviously gave Vincent an enormous joy, which visibly comes out in the paintings. That’s…
Tear-stained ramblings that remained unsent
The deserved success of Shaun Usher’s marvellous anthology Letters of Note has inspired several imitators, and Caroline Atkins’s sparkling collection…
Animals, tourists and raptors: the hazards of being a plein-air artist
A conservator at Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins Museum was recently astonished to find a tiny grasshopper stuck in the paint of…
Silent films
On 15 September 1888 Vincent van Gogh was intrigued to read an account of an up-to-date artist’s house in the…
Wild at heart
Delacroix’s frigid self-control concealed an emotional volcano. Martin Gayford explores the paradoxes that define the apostle of modernism
Why would a dissolute rebel like Paul Gauguin paint a nativity?
Martin Gayford investigates how this splendid Tahitian Madonna came about and why religion was ever-present in Gauguin's art
From cave painting to Maggi Hambling: the best Christmas art books
It’s been a memorably productive year for art books (I have published a couple myself), but certain volumes stand out.…
Christ of the coal mines
William Cook reports from the sooty netherworld that made an artist of Vincent Van Gogh
Art of grunting
Mr Turner may be the gruntiest film of the year, possibly the gruntiest film ever. ‘Grunt, grunt, grunt,’ goes Mr…
A kind of magic
Talking of Rembrandt’s ‘The Jewish Bride’ to a friend, Vincent van Gogh went — characteristically — over the top. ‘I…
Past lives
Eighty-seven Hackford Road, SW9, is unremarkable but for a blue plaque telling the world that Vincent van Gogh once lived…
They do it with mirrors
If ever there was a time to write a book about self-portraits, this must be it. ‘Past interest in the…
Bloom and bust
‘How could a man who has loved light and flowers so much and has rendered them so well, how could…
